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Designer Profile

Raf Simons

Belgian fashion designer at the vanguard of progressive menswear. Simons' initial training was in Industrial Design, spending some years designing furniture for galleries and interiors. Acquiring tailoring training from leading Belgian practitioner, Walter van Bierendonck, before launching the first eponymous menswear collection in 1995. Simons' intricately choreographed shows play on the ambiguous identity created by the combination of a traditional education with subversive cultures like punk and new wave, and are a subtle mix of 'high' fashion, youth culture, music and performance.